A simple request: (re)building my repitoire

[Diomedea syrici]

Please forgive my use of the guild as a search engine, but I'm kind of at a loss. I remember seeing an argument that pretty well destroyed the idea that conception is a good standard to judge when 'life' begins somewhere in the forums over the last few weeks. I remember it coming from some biologist or embryologist and concentrating on how conception is not an instantaneous event and tackling specifically with the idea that our 'destiny' as a person is fixed and immutable from that moment onward by pointing out that chimeric people can and do lead completely normal lives, something that should not be possible if every fertilized ovum was unique and immutable. Any ideas?

I've also decided that I've wasted enough time and that I need to rewrite some of my old one-off arguments; specifically ones where I showed that a normal failure rate can reasonably account for the 54% statistic we cite often enough, and the other was where I showed that Roe had very little impact on the frequency of abortion in the USA. I've done both of these before but lost some of my source materials and my google-fu has not improved with age. If anyone could help me find a good estimate for the number of heterosexual couples of childbearing age having sex in the USA on any given day for the first, or a a site that lists, as specifically as possible, the estimated rates of (illegal) abortion for at least a few years before Roe (I seem to remember Guttmacher doing this, but I've never been able to find it again) I'd really appreciate it. After that, it;s just a few minutes of back-of-the-envelope maths and a few more unanswerable arguments for our side.

Thanks, and sorry for adding to the clutter.

~Jaa  

[PhaedraMcSpiffy]

That first one was biologist/blogger PZ Myers:

Quote:

His rationalizations for pro-life extremism simply don't make sense: he seems to think something special happens at fertilization that unambiguously and unarbitrarily defines a human being. Diploidy is not the scientific term for ensoulment. Genetic specification is not sufficient to specify an individual. Potential is not a synonym for actuality. Fertilization is not a switch that triggers an ineluctable program towards individuality. The combinatorial uniqueness of an individual's genome is inadequate to define the individual.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/bye_bye_ra.php

He recently made a similar post:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/rebuked_by_michael_egnor.php  

[_Morgane Fay_]

I have nothing to contribute at the moment, just lurking in the hope of more contributions. I've sort of burnt out on my stand-by arguments, too, and have been (way?) too emotional in my arguing lately. I can't help but take things really ******** personal, these days. The complete lack of empathy in our adversaries is so draining.

(And is it me, or is the guild verrah quiet, lately?)  

[Jaaten Syric]

_Morgane Fay_

I have nothing to contribute at the moment, just lurking in the hope of more contributions. I've sort of burnt out on my stand-by arguments, too, and have been (way?) too emotional in my arguing lately. I can't help but take things really ******** personal, these days. The complete lack of empathy in our adversaries is so draining.

(And is it me, or is the guild verrah quiet, lately?)

I've kinda gone the opposite route with mine. I've stopped pretending that I can empathize with a fetus, and, really, that I care about it in any meaningful way. That said, I have become something of a walking example of the two wrongs make a right fallacy: i.e. I was never particularly courteous or soft handed around lifers, but now I will use their behavior and the inanity of their positions to just tear into them without mercy.

(That said, I think I'll have to come back to the contraceptive use one because I think I've been doing my math wrong, the abortion rate one I know I had, I used it against Drake a couple of years ago, but I've never been able to find the thread or my stats. )

And yeah, a bit... But since it is, and we're all interested in improving our arguments, mind critiquing my deconstruction of that idiotic Libertarians for life 'Fetuses aren't parasites because...' list?  

[_Morgane Fay_]

Jaaten Syric

_Morgane Fay_

I have nothing to contribute at the moment, just lurking in the hope of more contributions. I've sort of burnt out on my stand-by arguments, too, and have been (way?) too emotional in my arguing lately. I can't help but take things really ******** personal, these days. The complete lack of empathy in our adversaries is so draining.

(And is it me, or is the guild verrah quiet, lately?)

I've kinda gone the opposite route with mine. I've stopped pretending that I can empathize with a fetus, and, really, that I care about it in any meaningful way. That said, I have become something of a walking example of the two wrongs make a right fallacy: i.e. I was never particularly courteous or soft handed around lifers, but now I will use their behavior and the inanity of their positions to just tear into them without mercy.

Oh yeah, same here.
What gets to me, emotionally, is that they're talking about me. They would look me in the eye and tell me "tough luck, b***h" if I had a heart-wrenchingly honest story of desperation. They deny my personhood and deny they're doing it. They are content with punishing me for having a sex life and then deny it's punishment.
That really, really viscerally upsets me, and that in turn leads to sloppy, emotional arguing on my part.

Quote:

(That said, I think I'll have to come back to the contraceptive use one because I think I've been doing my math wrong, the abortion rate one I know I had, I used it against Drake a couple of years ago, but I've never been able to find the thread or my stats. )

And yeah, a bit... But since it is, and we're all interested in improving our arguments, mind critiquing my deconstruction of that idiotic Libertarians for life 'Fetuses aren't parasites because...' list?

Sure, it's more constructive than arguing with that black hole of logic that is Macai. Give me a few days to ponder smile  

[Jaaten Syric]

_Morgane Fay_

Oh yeah, same here.
What gets to me, emotionally, is that they're talking about me. They would look me in the eye and tell me "tough luck, b***h" if I had a heart-wrenchingly honest story of desperation. They deny my personhood and deny they're doing it. They are content with punishing me for having a sex life and then deny it's punishment.
That really, really viscerally upsets me, and that in turn leads to sloppy, emotional arguing on my part.

I'm not an emotional man, and seeing as how the only way I'll ever knowingly and voluntarily father a biological child will be if I'm selected as a friend's 'rent out stud', the gut wrenching decisions faced by women cannot really hit me on an emotional level. The one thing that really does? When I see men argue that because since the fetus has 'half their DNA' they ought to have some (potentially all) the say in the reproductive choices of their partner (barring a few select circumstance of course! Lifers would never wish to punish women who aren't sexually frustrated puritans.) that does hit me, and for the same reason: that used to be me, (That was never one of the arguments I used publicly when I was a lifer, but it was something I used to rationalize my beliefs) and that sort of pervasive misogyny needs to be fought tooth and nail.

Quote:

(
Sure, it's more constructive than arguing with that black hole of logic that is Macai. Give me a few days to ponder smile

I gave up on Macai a long time ago. There are pedantic assholes in the world, but most of them will at least admit they're wrong when you show them that 'no, when you construct proofs in formal logic, the order of your axioms really does ******** matter'. Macai on the other hand, after being told this by three different people decided otherwise.